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The first ritual the Israelites ever enacted, the rite of passage that prepared them to leave bondage in Egypt, is one that can be re-imagined every year to guide us in discovering who we are and who we might become.

Like all Jewish festivals, Passover has its roots in Jewish history, in our connection to creation and in the rich spiritual and moral values of Judaism. Additionally, it helps us distinguish between two very different types of freedom.

On this Passover, we have an opportunity -- and responsibility -- to hold in our hearts and minds a grand vision of justice and peace, and to move from the general to the specific, from the abstract to the concrete.

Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah -- the user's manual for the Passover seder -- has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. Everywhere there have been Jews, there have been new Haggadahs.

According to Jewish tradition, the upcoming festival of Shavuot is the anniversary of the giving of the Torah and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Oddly though, we find no clear link in the Bible between the Shavuot festival and the giving of the Torah.

Right now, the Jewish community is finishing up its annual marking of days, as each night we count the Omer, the 49 days between the second night of Passover and the beginning of Shavuot. Immediately after, we'll mark another set of days, one with only despair and no celebration.

The human experience is not always pretty. Sometimes it's very tragic and difficult. Lag BaOmer is a day of joy that stands out in a time of sadness. It is a day that six years ago we forced ourselves to leave our broken hearts behind and participate in The Great Parade.

The story of endurance and eternity is heartbreaking in the wake of the Boston Marathon. There are no satisfiable answers to why these things happen. Just a raging desire to find comfort, any kind of comfort, in the face of a ghastly tragedy.

Early yesterday, during my morning prayers, I came across an interesting passage in the Zohar -- the enigmatic, poetic, foundational opus of Jewish mysticism -- and soon, innumerable surprising connections were revealed.